Red Eyes
by Rosaliebyrd13
Summary: In which Bella really is an Albino and Edward can't really appreciate her morbid sense of humor. A Two Shot. Please read and review!


Act One, Scene One: 

"Your eyes are red." The voice that says this is full of incredulous wonder.

Actually, the voice sounds more horrified, but I'm trying to be positive. So instead of answering the guy with a snarky comment (a specialty of mine) I ignore him, and continue reading.

Until the jackass pulls the book out of my hands.

My mother has preached at me for years about how to act around assholes (she calls them uninformed though). _People_, she says, _are just ignorant. They don't understand why you look a little different. You just need to be nice to them. Answer their questions, let them know about albinism and try to understand where they're coming from. _

This guy didn't ask questions though. He made a statement, and then took away my book like a snotty kindergartener.

"Your eyes are _red_." He really does sound horrified now; there's no way for me to bend that in a different direction.

So instead I do exactly what going through years of public school with a physical deformity has taught me. I take off my glasses (really thick and shaped like the ones hipsters wear for no goddamned reason) so that this chucklehead can get the full brunt of my red eyed glare, and say the most terrifyingly nonchalant thing I can think of.

"Yeah. My mom says they're red because I drink the blood of impoverished children and practice black magic."

Behind us (because naturally we're seated at the very front of the class room) every single teenager is silent. I think a few of them have even stopped breathing. So far today (my first day in a new school in a small town) nobody has asked me about the way I look. I've gotten the _where did you live before? What kinda stuff do you do on the weekends? Where do you buy your clothes? _ But nobody has asked me why I look like some extra in a horror movie

(red eyes, white hair, albino skin).

Now the entire junior biology class is getting a firsthand look at what happens when I am confronted by stupidity.

The boy's jaw is hanging in the air. Whatever answer he expected, it wasn't what I said. I'm almost worried that he really and truly believes that I drain the blood of babies every night.

He's sitting just close enough to me that I can see without my glasses on (normally something that is impossible) that he really and truly can think of nothing to say. His eyes meet mine, and I can't read what's behind them, but whatever it is, it isn't good.

Black eyes stare into red. Behind us the entire classroom is still silent. I'm pretty sure that this is more drama than Forks High has seen in centuries.

And then a kid named Mike (friendly, likes superhero movies and violent contact sports) saves us from what could have become a very vicious conversation.

(I say conversation, but what I mean is me, verbally ripping this idiot a new one.)

"Cullen, you dipshit," Mike hisses, "She's albino."

"Thank you Mike," My voice is calm, and not just the I'm-trying-to-hide-my-desire-to-kill-you calm, but the legitimate I have nothing more to say calm.

The entire room breaks out into excited murmuring. I take this opportunity to snatch my book back from the asshole, Cullen, who is looking a bit like a trout on a bank, hook still in gaping mouth.

Finally, the teacher enters (balding, short, over enthusiastic) and class begins as though nothing has happened.

"Ahh you must be our new student Isabella Swan!"

"Just Bella," I smile and slip my glasses back into place.

Act One, Scene Two:

When I finally get home from school my dad's already in his seat at the kitchen table.

"How was your day baby girl?" He's worried about the teenagers in a small town, worried that I was the subject of teasing and scandalous storytelling.

"It was fine daddy," I reply, because there's no need to tell him about the antics of one Edward Cullen.

I know what the world looks like, despite the careful designs of my parents (who love me in a protective, smothering way) and so I keep the day's excitement to myself. There will always be other assholes to tell my dad about.

Act One, Scene Three: 

Lying in my bed, I can't get comfortable. All I can see in my mind's eye is the face of Jackass Cullen, mouth gaping like a monkey, or a fish perhaps, with scales dehydrating on the sandy banks of a river that it never evolved to survive on.

At night, in my own room all alone with no one there to remind me that the rest of the world doesn't have white hair and red eyes, I can feel myself slipping into the person that I could've been if I weren't such a fucking cynic.

I can see myself, in some other universe, thinking floaty thoughts, a real life Luna Lovegood. Reading Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte novels. I imagine myself with my father's brown hair and my mother's blue eyes. With nothing to distinguish me from all of the other girls, I can easily imagine myself slipping into the background.

I can easily imagine myself thinking strange, floaty thoughts about stupid boys and how they resemble trout in a poetic way.

Reality ripples, pulses, and for a minute I can see it there in front of me. It must be some strange just-before-sleep vision, the girl whose life I am seeing, constructing. But it is enough.

Just before my eyes sag for the last time I make a resolution. If Edward Cullen is nice tomorrow, tries to apologize, I will talk to him, be nice back.

That's what the brown-haired, blue-eyed Bella would do.


End file.
